Is it time to stop using the word 'piracy'?

Wednesday 15 April 2009 19.22 EDT
First published on Wednesday 15 April 2009 19.22 EDT

There are certainly plenty of people who think so. Both real-world and digital piracy have gathered plenty of headlines recently – a timely coincidence that has served to bring the differences between the two into sharp contrast.

People are pointing out that the activities of digital rebels such as The Pirate Bay couldn't be further from the raw violence of Somali pirates who are locked in a string of bloody battles off the east African coast.

The latest to question the use of "piracy" to describe digital copying is Stephen Dubner, one of the authors of the bestselling book Freakonomics.

"It was a clever name, at least in the beginning. Hijacked movies, music, games, even books – yeah, it's the outlaws taking from the establishment, creating some wealth for the common man," he said on his blog. "But in recent weeks, as real-life pirate attacks have gained in intensity, violence, and geopolitical meaning, talking about digital thieves as pirates has come to seem clever to a fault, and inaccurate too."

Some people have highlighted this tension between different uses of the word for a long time. Richard ­Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and a notorious linguistic stickler, has a long list of words he finds troubling (including "free", "creator" and "ecosystem"). He believes that piracy has always been a propaganda term when used by publishers.

So what could we use instead? Stallman puts forward "unauthorised copying", "prohibited copying" – and even "sharing information with your neighbour". Dubner, meanwhile, scrabbled for the term "dobbery" (as in digital robbery) which is not only uncomfortable but has the potential to be just as controversial as its predecessor.

John Gruber, the author of the ­Daring Fireball blog, suggests that we don't need new words or phrases: "Bootlegging is already apt," he wrote. That may be loaded with its own problems, but it does at least have a long history in the music world that predates digital piracy and has different associations.

Still, whatever the campaigners unite behind they could be in for a long-term battle. Somalian pirates may be in the news today, but previous stories of theft, kidnap and murder (often in the South China Sea) have failed to jolt a ­linguistic shift. Perhaps it's time to admit that the ship has already sailed.